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The Most Successful Georgian Startup? Startup Grind: Meet George Arison Who Raised $110MM for Shift

Stamba Hotel - 14 MERAB KOSTAVA STREET Tbilisi, 0108

Mon, Aug 6, 2018, 6:00 PM (GMT+4)

About this event

At Startup Grind We're Serious About Growing Great Companies and Helping Each Other

Startup Grind is a global community where people who have founded startups, want to found startups, fund them, want to work for them, or just learn about them gather. Tbilisi hosts one of the chapters and is part of a million-person global community. Come meet Georgians, expats, and visitors who are helping to build our startup community. The first hour and last hour are for networking, making friends and finding ways we can help each other build a strong and successful startup community here.

Come ready to meet strangers or learn new things about people you already know. And come ready to see how you can help others! It can be as simple as boosting a Facebook post someone wants to publicize or helping someone solve a problem they have or find a good employee. Come, join us for some food and drink and great conversations as we grow our startup community!

This month it's a very special guest, perhaps Georgia's most successful startup founder. George Arison (born "Irakly Areshidze" ) is a Georgian-born entrepreneur in San Francisco who founded Shift Technologies which has raised over $110,000,000 in investment and is poised to raise more this year for expansion.

Shift is an online, peer-to-peer, marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Prior to Shift, in 2007, he co-founded Taxi Magic, today known as Curb. This was a ride-hailing app even before Uber! He worked at Google as product manager where he gained knowledge and contacts, and also at Boston Consulting Group.

George brings a wealth of experience and connections from Silicon Valley and roots here in Georgia!

Speaker

George Arison

Shift

Founder & CEO

George Arison is a Georgian-born American businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Shift, an online, peer-to-peer, marketplace for buying and selling used cars. He has raised $300 Million in funding for Shift, from investors such as Goldman Sachs. Prior to Shift, in 2007, he co-founded Taxi Magic, today known as Curb.

George Arison

Shift

George Arison is Founder and CEO of Shift, a people-powered marketplace revolutionizing the $750B used car industry. Shift has raised over $300 Million including investments from Goldman Sachs and top-tier VCs.

Previously he was a product manager at Google, where he worked on Helpouts and Fiber. In 2007, George co-founded Taxi Magic, which today books millions of yearly rides with service in 50 US cities. Prior to working in technology, George ran a parliamentary campaign for a leading opposition party in his native country of Georgia and published a book titled Democracy and Autocracy in Eurasia. George graduated from Middlebury College in 2000.

Arison was born into a politically influential family of ample means in the Republic of Georgia in 1977. At a time when tensions were still high between the United States and the Soviet Union, a 14-year-old Arison travelled to the US and received the benefits of an American private-school education. Although he had always desired to return to Georgia and involve himself in the politics of the region, his love for America and its many opportunities had him returning to its shores not soon after his return to his motherland.

His debut in the American professional market was at BCG in Washington, a job that his friend, and later partner, Toby Russell, helped him procure. It was when he was sent by the company to a few of the smaller cities to meet clients that he realised how tiresome it was to try and book taxis in unfamiliar cities. The need to simplify this hectic process is what propelled him to stumble upon this idea, and wasting no time, he set up a meeting over drinks with Russell and the latter’s entrepreneur-turned friend Tom Depasquale.